


Happily Ever After

by semele



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-26
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-02 13:25:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have sex. Oh, and there's a piano. Also, Elena is a morally dubious princess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happily Ever After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ever_neutral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ever_neutral/gifts).



> Written after TVD 3x16. Yes, this fic contains metaphors, and also Elena sleeping with both brothers simultanously.

Elena sits on the piano, and for a second Damon is speechless, because this is just too absurd.

He expected something like that would happen sooner or later, and yet it takes him by surprise. This is not how it should be. He shouldn't even be here, he is the villain in this story, and he should've left ages ago, should leave now, while he still can.

Instead, he drops to his knees, and before he even knows, his head is under Elena's skirt, such a terrible cliché, her thighs on his arms and his fingers dramatically clutching the lid of the piano. 

He's done that before, years ago, and he remembers why, so he knows that whatever he does now is off the record, his head between her legs or her own short breath. If he had any self-respect, he would've stopped now, told her to get a grip and get the hell out, but then Elena says “Please,” and he doesn't know how he will ever get up.

After they're done, Elena, shielded by the absurdity of the piano, straightens her skirt and bites her lip; within a second, she is back to the real world. Damon, knees raw and jaw sore, doesn't have that luxury.

***

He still plays every day, even after what happened, doesn't see a reason not to. He can't take his mind off Elena no matter what he does, and the piano helps him think, keeps his hands busy and sets the mood. He plays random tunes, no beginning, no end, and no coherence. It seems fitting for his story: Damon Salvatore is a sequence of ridiculous events joined rather by themes than plots. He sleeps with his brother's girls while Stefan listens from behind the wall, and he finds love when other people would run screaming. He wouldn't even know what do do with symphonies or concerts, so he just plays whatever comes to his mind, and it's surprisingly soothing.

He knows Elena and Stefan are listening, even though he can't hear them from behind the piano. He plays a game with them, tries to guess their mood, and then plays something wrong. Damon's head is full of stories about what they do when he is downstairs, ruining their romantic evenings with the silliest polkas he can remember, or maybe Mendelssohn if he's feeling crafty. He's sure Stefan appreciates the joke.

Some evenings Damon chooses to play quietly. He makes it so that he can hear everything, and it feels like being inside of a movie: soft jazz in the background and the familiar sound of bodies moving against one another. Stefan likes this melody, and Damon tries to make it personal, plays a note a little lower every time he hears Elena moan, speeds up, slows down, waits, anticipates, finishes. Every time it's a little easier to keep up, and Damon is good at noticing the patterns, he can hear if Stefan and Elena are tender or passionate, careful or hasty, serious or silly, casual or romantic.

It's been a few days, and everything upstairs sounds like a fairy tale, so Damon knows that soon Elena will come down to seek him again.

***

“Play something for me.”

He has his hands on the keys before he can even think about it. He's been playing a lot lately, maybe even too much, because he automatically picks up a tune Elena's been humming for the last few days, one of Stefan's favorites. After the first few notes Elena stops smiling and takes a deep breath. It's her happily ever after now, she killed Klaus and got back the love of her life, a beautiful story, really, flawless construction and well-played roles. As Damon starts playing the second passage, he thinks that only now he can fully appreciate the poetry of it.

Suddenly he notices that Elena's moved close, too close, and now she's shamelessly staring at his hands. She's always liked looking at them, it's just a thing she does, but now her eyes are following every movement of his fingers, and Damon misses a note, wondering if Elena can hear him play in the evenings. He isn't a fool, he knows his place in the story, just like he knows that Elena didn't come to him for the music, but he can't help thinking, misses yet another sound, two, three, four more, tries to cover it up by changing a song, but it doesn't work, it never works. His hands are shaking just a little, and he knows Elena can see, so he gets shameless about it. She can have him whenever she wants, and she doesn't sugar-coat it for him, so he owes her one.

Half of his notes are wrong right now, but he keeps playing, stuck in the scene, sure that if he ever stops, something terrible will happen. When Elena finally comes between him and the piano, he is so grateful it chokes him. She puts his hands on her hips and starts unzipping his pants, and no, it doesn't stop the feeling of terror, but what would be the point if it did?

Elena straddles him and takes him in so easily like they've never done anything else. Before he can touch her face, she leans back, and her fingers hit a few random keys as she grabs the piano for balance. Elena winces at the sound of disharmony. She tries to rearrange her hands somehow, but Damon shakes his head desperately, so she freezes. Maybe she even understands, because just for a second everything makes perfect sense. Elena lets him set the rhytm for a while, and he holds on to her, because the whole world is so obviously revolving around her right now. 

She lets him hear the notes as they are.

***

“I'm using you,” says Elena in one of her rare moments of remorse, and Damon can't help but laugh, because she lets him kiss her anyway. Tonight, she lets him kiss her.

She looks tiny and helpless as he sits her on the lid of the piano and steps between her legs. It would be so wrong to kiss every inch of her skin, wrong and uncalled for. Damon bites his lip in anticipation, but keeps himself in check. She needs him rough right now, needs to feel that he can keep her together, needs him to play along, so he undresses her without even asking. Upstairs Stefan starts fiddling with a pen, tapping it on an empty page, and Damon skips the unnecessary foreplay; it will hurt for a moment, but that's probably the point

Damon isn't a part of this story, so he doesn't know exactly why Elena is with him right now. He only gets bits, pieces and glimpses, but it's enough to imagine the rest; he is good at imagining. 

He thrusts deeper as he hears Stefan scratch out a line; they both play their roles in such beautiful harmony. The smell of Elena never really wears off, they can smell it on each other's hands even after she's left. Stefan always stays upstairs when Elena enters the music room. Damon knows his journal has been empty for days; no matter what Stefan might try to do, it's Elena who's writing them now.

She moans a second before Stefan lets out a frustrated sigh, and Damon speeds up. There will be bruises on her thighs and scratches on her hips for Stefan to see, and she takes it all, wraps her legs around Damon's waist as she clenches around him. She can count on him to continue even after tears of relief appear in her eyes, and maybe sometimes he wonders how it would be if she wasn't sore, and exhausted, and exposed, but it doesn't stop him. He goes on until his knees buckle under him.

He's better at being the bad guy anyway.

***

Elena only breaks the pattern once.

She isn't supposed to be in his bedroom, not now and not ever. There is something terrifying in her steps, and Damon can already see that it will end badly, but he laughs at the thought that he could tell Elena to leave. 

She crawls onto him without saying a word, just like she always does, and she feels awkward against his skin, as if words were hovering over her head. Damon keeps telling himself that he can't read too much into it; there is a bed, and there are pillows, but it changes nothing, absolutely nothing. His fingers still tap a soft jazz tune on Elena's hips, making sure that he'll never be anything but a background noise.

It catches him by surprise: Elena puts her hand on his cheek and sees right through him. It doesn't matter that he flips them over, desperately trying to think of something, anything, that would stop what's coming. There's probably nothing he can do anyway; it's Elena who owns all the words, and she doesn't care about collateral damage.

“I love you,” she gasps. 

Words start spilling out of Elena's mouth, her fingers dig into his back, and Damon can't take his eyes off her. He plays his role right till the end: she needs him to believe, so he believes her with all his heart as her nails scratch him so hard she draws blood.

He lets her play him.


End file.
